when a gun control advocate finds a situation like Chicago except going the otherway, the argument from gun supporters is to question the correlation between the gun control legislation and the drop in crime.

what is the correlation, if there is one, between the gun control legislation and a hugely complicated city like Chicago? In fact, I would think that at one point there were lax gun laws and lots of violence. Gun control was probably brought in past a violence tipping point. This would be like waiting to bail water in a sinking ship, and then being told to put more water into the ship to make it stay afloat because the bailing isn't helping.

gun supporters say there is no evidence that gun proliferation adds to violent deaths and that gun control does not work anywhere. Every study that is brought forward to demonstrate the opposite is parsed down until something, anything, real or not can be identified to suggest discrediting the study. The strategy of the gun supporters is to seed fear, uncertainty and doubt.

The same thing happened with smoking. For decades, arguments were used to dissociate smoking from being a health hazard.

It's now happening with climate change. With the hottest summer on record, lots of ice melting, and even a koch funded study suggesting that climate change is man made, it will not be possible to ignore this much longer.

The conclusions around the benefits of effective gun control, allowing law-abiding citizens to own a reaonable and appropriately powered firearms, and effective checks and balances are out there but still subject to fear, uncertainty and doubt. This will eventually change.

Look at the map below. It shows the average number of firearms per 100 people. Most of the world is shaded light green – those are the countries where there are between zero and 10 guns per 100 citizens. In dark brown, you have the countries with more than 70 guns per 100 people. The U.S. is the only country in that category. In fact, the last global Small Arms Survey showed there are 88 guns for every 100 Americans. Yemen is second at 54. Serbia and Iraq are among the other countries in the top 10.

We have 5 percent of the world's population and 50 percent of the guns.

But the sheer number of guns isn’t an isolated statistic. The data shows we compare badly on fatalities, too. The U.S has three gun homicides per 100,000 people. That’s four times as many as Switzerland, ten times as many as India, 20 times as many as Australia and England.

I saw an interesting graph in The Atlantic magazine recently. A spectrum shows the number of gun-related deaths by state. Now if you add one more piece of data – gun control restrictions – you see that the states with at least one firearm law (such as an assault weapons ban or trigger locks) tend to be the states with fewer gun-related deaths.

WASHINGTON -- Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said Sunday that there are "undoubtedly" limits to a person's right to bear arms under the Second Amendment, but that future court cases will have to decide where to draw the line.

During an appearance on "Fox News Sunday," Scalia was asked whether lawmakers have the right to ban high-capacity gun magazines without violating a person's constitutional right to bear arms. The question comes less than two weeks after the Colorado shooting massacre that left 12 dead and dozens more injured -- and at a time when neither President Barack Obama nor Congress appear willing to touch the issue of gun control.

1. 'frighting', when the second amendment was passed was a crime. This involved carrying weapons intended to scare people

2. he sights that future courts will have to intepret what was reasonable to be carried at the time of the second amendment. e.g. rocket launchers did not exist. btw - neither did large magazines and other powerful hand guns. According to scalia's own words, it is reasonable to assume that weapons not present at that time can have restrictions placed on them. wow - this whole debate is more largely about making money for the NRA and the gun manufacturers as well as satisfying paranoia.

So many lives could be saved if we had meaningful controls to allow people to buy and collect guns, while ensuring that people are not being turned into parnoid creatures and over-buying through fear.

The study, which was conducted in May by GOP wordsmith Frank Luntz, revealed the following data points as well:

•74 percent of NRA members believe concealed carry permits should only be granted to applicants who have completed gun safety training.
•68 percent of NRA members believe concealed carry permits should only be granted to applicants who do not have prior arrests for domestic violence.
•63 percent of NRA members believe concealed carry permits should only be granted to applicants 21 years of age or older.
•75 percent of NRA members believe that concealed carry permits should be granted only to those applicants who have not committed any violent misdemeanors.
Taken in full, the numbers cut against the conventional wisdom, which holds that there is little political will for tackling gun control legislation in the wake of Friday's shooting in Aurora, Colo. But that theory, the study's authors insisted, was always based on a false reading of the public opinion data.

“Gun owners and NRA members overwhelmingly support common sense steps to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, even as the NRA leadership continues to oppose them,” said New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, chair of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which commissioned the study. “It’s time for those in Washington -– and those running for President –- to stand with gun owning citizens who are concerned about public safety, rather than influence peddling lobbyists who are obsessed with ideology."

Consider what happened in Australia after a crazed gunman killed 35 people in Port Arthur, Tasmania, in 1996.

The Australian federal government persuaded all states and territories to implement tough new gun control laws. Under the National Firearms Agreement (NFA), firearms legislation was tightened throughout the country. National registration of guns was imposed and it became illegal to hold certain long guns that might be used in mass shootings.

The gun ban was backed up by a mandatory buy-back program that substantially reduced gun possession in Australia.

iReporter: 'AK-47 a weapon for war'

The effect was that both gun suicides and homicides (as well as total suicides and homicides) fell. Importantly, while there were 13 mass shootings in Australia during the period of 1979--96, there have been none in the sixteen years since.

Amendment II
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

several things:
1. this is an amendment, so further amendments could change this. Otherwise, why was the amendment allowed in the first place
2. this applies to a well regulated militia. are lunatics part of a militia?
3. it says nothing about controls or where the guns should be stored. Where should they be kept?
4. it says nothing about ammunition. Should this be readily available?
5. what exactly are arms? are they small weapons, muskets, artilery, machine guns? i would say they should be muskets or the weapons at the time the law was written.
6. what does infringed mean?

Don't ask the current corrupt supreme court. they will obviously interpet the wording in the favor of their corporate and repub masters.

What i hear from people about their rights, as conferred by this simple wording, makes no sense and is only argued in their paranoid favor.

I can't make up my mind. I'm beginning to think they are both. They're also perpetually scared.

Being scared turns them into conservatives as they think they are protecting their property and keeping it out of the hands of others.

Being intellectually inferior (e.g. stupid), they can understand that they are wrong and backing policies that only hurt them (witness the idiots voting for Romney who will do nothing to enrich the lives of anyone below the top 10 percent of the top 10 percent).

Being wimps, they act like crybabies when the left has no choice but to fight back and fight hard (witness the poor crybabies on the news channels complaining about the President's mean commercials calling Romney out to release his tax returns like any other prospective candidate has in recent memory).